One Vote At A Time, Oklahoma County Election Board Recounting DA Race

The Oklahoma County Election Board is making its way through tens of thousands of ballots in the recount process for its district attorney race.

Election staff members count the ballots one-by-one. 

Republican district attorney hopeful Kevin Calvey called for the recount after narrowly avoiding a runoff with opponent Gayland Gieger by just 30 votes. 

The 30-vote difference is out of 53,997 votes cast in the race. All of them are now being recounted manually. 

One person reads the vote out loud and holds it up for observers to see. 

“They’re watching to make sure a particular ballot is counted correctly,” Calvey said. 

 Next, the vote goes into a pile. Two people mark tallies. All this – under the watchful eye of volunteer “watchers.”

Karen Stark volunteered to watch the process. 

“I’m here as a patriotic Oklahoman who believes in fair and honest elections and want to see this process carried out,” Stark said. 

Stark takes the job seriously.

“I think it will be a long day,” Stark said. “It will be a hard day sitting on chairs when I forgot my cushion, but I’m willing to do it to make sure this happens.” 

“It’s a matter of -- kind of like, auditing the system to make sure the count was done correctly,” Calvey said. 

The recount was challenged in court Wednesday by candidate Gayland Gieger. 

“I just wanted to point out that if we’re going to do this, we need to do it the right way,” Gieger said. “But from all indications, the recount is progressing completely as we expected.”

A judge ruled it would go forward. 

Election staff haven’t released yet how long the process will take, but it could last at least a couple of weeks.